Signs Of the Times

Walmart reported on Feb. 19 that it would increase wages and establish more predictable work schedules for employees. New employees will receive a minimum wage of $9 an hour beginning in April 2015 and $10 starting in 2016.

In a letter to Walmart “associates,” Walmart’s chief executive officer and president, Doug McMillon, explained the new policy: “We’re always trying to do the right thing and build a stronger business.

The leader of the Catholic Church in Libya called for dialogue and understanding in his violence-torn country on Feb. 16, even as prayers and calls for action followed the horror of the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians. The men, who had come to Libya from Egypt in search of work, had been kidnapped in two separate incidents in December and January by extremists operating in self-professed allegiance to Islamic State.

In a letter on Feb. 19 to state legislators, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco wrote that he respects the legislators’ right “to employ or not employ whomever you wish to advance your mission” and expects the same courtesy after several had urged him to remove sexual morality clauses from handbooks for archdiocesan teachers. • Muslims on Twitter have been tweeting photos of themselves using #Muslims4Lent, declaring what they will...

The Washington-based Interfaith Working Group on Trade and Investment called the Obama administration’s efforts to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement “undemocratic” in a statement on Feb.17. The trade pact between the United States and about a dozen Asian countries is expected to lift tariffs on goods and services on an estimated 40 percent of U.S. imports and exports. Fast-track negotiations “would limit Congress to only 90 days of...

On Feb. 22 Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India announced the release of Alexis Prem Kumar, S.J., in a comment on his Twitter feed. The Indian Jesuit had been seized in June 2014 in western Afghanistan after a visit to a Jesuit-supported school for the children of returning refugees he supervised as the Afghanistan country representative for Jesuit Refugee Services.

Congress should reaffirm the principle that government “should not force anyone to stop offering or covering much-needed legitimate health care” because of a conscientious objection to abortion or other procedures, said Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, O.F.M.Cap., of Boston and Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore....

On Feb. 12, 2005, two hired gunmen killed Sister Dorothy Stang, 73, in a remote Brazilian settlement just off the Trans-Amazonian Highway. As a tireless advocate for the poor and landless in Brazil for more than three decades, the Ohio-born nun came into conflict with ruthless landowners. Three nuns from Stang’s order, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, continue to live in the small city of Anapu in the wooden house where Stang lived until her death.

When Pope Francis visited Asia earlier this year, the Philippines, the third-largest Catholic nation in the world and the only majority Catholic nation in the region, received most of his attention. Also on his itinerary was Sri Lanka, which was receiving a pontiff for the first time in 20 years as it emerges from the shadow of a decades-long civil war.

Video of Pope Francis visiting with Latin American immigrants at a settlement camp near Rome on Feb. 8 became a global Internet phenomenon.• Congress should urge Israel to halt confiscation of Palestinian lands, a move that may “renew hope for a just resolution to the conflict,” Bishop Oscar Cantú of Las Cruces, N.M., the chairman of the bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, wrote in a letter to Congress on Feb. 11. • ...